


Ourselves We Find

by Pemm



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 00:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6682546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But what have they ever done to deserve our help?” Pearl pushed. “I don’t understand.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ourselves We Find

_For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)  
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea_

“maggie and milly and molly and may,” e e cummings.

 

* * *

 

Five-thousand twenty-two hundred nine years, eight months, three days, and ten hours ago, Pearl had looked over the edge of Rose Quartz’s starship and seen the Earth’s ocean for the first time. She had stared down at it for eighteen seconds before twisting around to stride purposefully across the deck and stop at the cockpit’s outer wall to count to one hundred, until her head stopped spinning.

That was her first, formative memory of Earth: feeling sick, and being offended that some primitive planet in the middle of nowhere could do that to her. She was highly competent, as pearls went, well-versed in the gritty details of space travel and more than able to hold her own in zero-gravity, in the dizzying depths of space. But there she was, eyes fixed to the pink-on-pink spiraling thorn insignia that spanned half the ship, forehead pressed against the cool wall.

It was the waves, maybe. The way the water shifted and churned and moved like a living thing—a living thing stretching from horizon to horizon, too vast and self-concerned to notice a single small gem some miles above it. The oceans on homeworld were still, shining things that glittered in respectful silence. They rarely took up more area than a mid-size cruiser, by design.

When she could see straight again, Pearl had made the private decision that she would never have anything to do with oceans, and gone back into the hold.

 

* * *

 

Two thousand eight hundred sixty-six years, five months, five days, and six hours ago, Pearl had turned at exactly the wrong moment and was hit in the face with a flounder. She staggered backwards and nearly fell off the boat, while the fish landed on the boat’s edge before flipping itself back into the water. Across from her, a hand pressed to her mouth as she tried to suppress a smile, Rose Quartz bit her lip. “I’m so sorry! That one got away from me. Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m—I’m just fine,” Pearl said, forcing a smile as she tried to get the gamey salt taste off her lips. “Have we gotten enough fish yet?”

Rose looked from her to the box in the bottom of the little fishing boat, and the four fish inside of it. “Not quite,” she said, turning back to the net she had set against the side of the boat. “We’ll need quite a few more of these if we’re to help the humans.”

The humans. For all Pearl loved Rose, for all that she agreed and championed her ideals … “I don’t see why they can’t catch their own fish,” Pearl said, maybe a bit more sullenly than was appropriate. Well, but who could blame her? It was windy and rainy, and the sea tossed their makeshift boat around like a toy. Her hair was plastered to her face, and she simply hated to be wet. “ _They’re_ the ones who need to eat.”

“They need our help,” Rose said patiently, as she tested the line’s tension and checked the net. “A sickness wiped a lot of them out, and most of the ones left are all alone. The least we can do is help them with this.”

“But what have they ever done to deserve our help?” Pearl pushed. “I don’t understand.”

That got Rose to look at her, at least. It was a quiet, raised-eyebrows sort of look, which had the unintended side-effect of making Pearl very strongly consider diving over the edge of the boat. The tiniest cues Rose gave off could shift Pearl’s moods as if Rose held them on marionette strings. Before Pearl could entirely bring herself to go through with jumping into the choppy water, Rose had turned full to face her, hands gathered in her lap. “Well,” Rose began, “nothing.”

“But—”

“They don’t need to have done anything, Pearl. They’re there, and they need help—that’s enough. It’s not something they have to earn.” She laughed, a dusty bell sound. “That’s what I think, anyway.”

Pearl had sat still and quiet, staring down at the fish, unsure of what to say.

 

* * *

 

Seventeen years, two months, nine days, and five hours ago, Pearl had all but cornered Greg Universe against his own van. She held no weapon; she did not need one. “Explain it to me,” she said, all edges, all brambles.

She could see his face in the moonlight, the discomfort and the worry plain on his face. Nothing about Greg was subtle. “Um,” he started, and then stopped. Pearl dug her fingertips deeper into the palms of her hands. “Explain … what?”

He kept his van parked by the fence he had punched through, that awful night he had come roaring up the beach with it for the first time, just shouting distance from the temple. Now, as Pearl advanced another step, he tried to retreat, but the van kept him where he was. He flashed a glance back at it, a fraction of a second, as if he were afraid to take his eyes off of her.

Pearl grit her teeth.

“All of it!” she said, sweeping her hand out. Greg flinched. The moon glinted off his earrings. “ _You!_ What’s so special about _you?_ You’re just another human. What’ve you done that’s so great? What makes you so different from every other human that she’s—she’s …”

Much too late, she realized what she was saying. Her head rushed unpleasantly, she felt the color come into her cheeks. She dropped her gaze to the scuffled sand, all too suddenly hyper-aware of way her hands were clenched at her sides, of what she must look like in this moment.

“Pearl?” Greg said.

She flinched as if struck. Another instant and she was running, down the sand, away from the fence, away from the temple, to the yawning endless expanse of the sea.

She had read a book, once, postulating that early humans had been such successful hunters due to their endurance and ability to follow prey for hours without rest. In truth, she had never really paid enough attention to humans from that era to know if it was correct or not. But it was this stupid fact, this single paragraph from a poorly-written book she had read by chance years ago, that clung to the fore of her mind, because she could hear Greg calling after her, and his footsteps on the beach.

It was hardly that she could not have outrun him. Greg was out of shape and she would have been able to outlast him even if he wasn’t. It was something about the principle of the thing—about that he was chasing her at all. She ran half a mile down the beach before she came to a halting stop, and the surf came up to meet her.

She looked over her shoulder. Greg caught up ten seconds later, breathing hard, dropping to lean on his own knees when he finally stopped. “You guys are so _fast_ ,” he panted. “Pearl, come on, what’s the matter?”

“Are you telling me you really don’t know?” Pearl said, hugging her chest and looking back down at her feet.

“I mean,” Greg began. She listened as his breathing slowly went back to normal. “Yeah, I think I do. But I don’t have an answer for you.”

Silence. And then he added, with an uncertain kind of lilt in his voice, “I’m not trying to take her away from you, you know?”

“… I’ve never seen her acting the way she does around you before,” Pearl said after a few seconds. Her own voice felt limp and lost. “Not once in almost ten thousand years. I don’t understand you. I don’t understand humans.”

There was a hushed, whispering sound, and she was not sure if it was the waves or Greg, sighing. But he did pad up next to her, leaning forward to try and catch her eye. “Humans don’t really understand humans, either. All we can do is try.”

“But do I have to try?”

“Well,” he had said, “I don’t think it can hurt.”

 

* * *

 

And ten minutes ago, Pearl, exhausted and empty, grudgingly allowed Amethyst and Garnet to drag her out of her room. She followed them in a hollow silence out the temple, down the beach, out by the water. And she hung back in the shadows at first, tired, resentful, afraid. It took Garnet shepherding her forward, to where Greg sat at the water’s edge with something small bundled in his arms, to get her to move again.

Greg looked up. Smiled, or tried. “Uh … hey, Pearl.”

She said nothing. Not until he shifted the thing in his arms, peeling back the blanket, to reveal something small and pink and curly-haired, and even then it took her a few extra seconds. “This is … him?”

“Sure is,” Greg said, smiling down at the tiny human. It gurgled, and stretched, and blinked out sleepily at her. Pearl found herself suddenly frozen, and just as suddenly leaning forward, a little, to get a better look. Greg noticed. “Want to hold him?”

“Uh. O-oh, um. I’ve never … ”

When he got up and held the baby out to her, she almost backed away. Something was sparking in her, something new and foreign, and she did not know if she wanted to find out what it was. The only reason she didn’t was probably because Garnet was still standing directly behind her, as if she had predicted what Pearl would try to do. Probably she had.

Tentative, she finally reached out to take the child, shifting her arms obediently as Greg showed her how to hold him: support the head, keep him against your chest. A moment later, still not quite sure how, she found herself rooted to the earth, staring down at the thing in her arms in confusion, and with it staring right back up at her.

It—he—cooed at her, lifting one chubby arm up to grasp at the air, toward her nose. Unable to reach, it came down to pat at her chest, once, twice, before curling back down to his side.

“His name’s Steven,” Greg said. “Steven Quartz Universe.”

“Steven,” Pearl echoed, as the tide rolled in to lap at her feet. When it ebbed out again it was almost as if it took some part of her with it, something sharp and hard, as water erodes stone until it is round and smooth and gentle. She smiled, despite herself, and touched the baby’s forehead with one finger.

“Hello, Steven. My name is Pearl.”


End file.
